A. Ever got that feelings (I'm sure you did) when you feel bad if something good is happening to someone you know or better you like just because it gives you a sense of "left out" and very quickly you hold yourself and gets a guilt feeling for thinking in that lane on the ethical ground. You make yourself understand that you should be happy that this good is happening to that person beyond yourself.
B. The corollary to above feeling is a more common feeling in which you feel good if something negative and bad happens to someone because it makes you feel that you are not the worst and hence not alone. It makes you feel good about yourself.
If you were not a brilliant student in school and just average and below average then try to remember the guy whom you were sure would get lesser marks than you. you didn't had ridicule or hate feeling toward him you just were content that he would be worse than you. In fact there is an unrealized likeliness for that very person.
I have come to ascertain that these feelings though considered menial and negative but is also a very natural feeling. We just try to evade/ignore/avoid/suppress this very feeling but in my opinion it's better to accept this feeling and understand our own insecurities behind this.
If you take A into consideration it's simply a residue of "left-out" feeling. As a natural tendency all we do is to compare our own life with that person's in a split of second and find a lull and void in our life whereas in that person's life it's a progress and something welcoming good happening. So we feel sad about ourselves which when not tackled grows to feeling bad in general and sometime a silent and dark wish that this good must not happen to that person.
Whereas B for me is little easy and in some way funny feeling when we feel good if something bad happens to someone we know and we like because in the very depth all we do is feel close to that person as he is down and simply like in the above paragraph we compare our life with that person's and find ourselves lucky/better/happening than the other person's that makes us feel better about ourselves which again is when not handled is feeling good at others' misery.
At home suppose you are writhing in pain or illness and asking to god as "Why me?" feeling that you have been eternally punished and feeling so low about your own being that you feel not much interest in your life as such. Slowly you get into depression and from window you see people laughing, talking, playing carelessly and you feel that you are cursed as such as you are not blessed for what others are blessed.
After someday you visit to a doctor and while waiting on for your number you start to have a look at other patients bit closely and you see some people in really such a pathetic condition that it sends a chill in your spine and you totally sort of forget yourself and even your pain. You subconsciously realize if your life is curse what are theirs'? You thank god that you are not punished like them, you feel your problem to be puny and nothing compared to some of them. Sometime you just wonder how they are even living their life? All in all while sitting their you tends to slowly feel good about yourself, you feel more positive.
This is not about you and me, I guess it is just about all of us, it's the tendency to comparing ourselves to others. Is there a solution to that? For me there is no solution as such if we don't take it as a problem anyhow. We should understand that our life is our own it could be dull from someone else as well as it will be brighter from some. If we can't help but compare we should be smart enough to not to value those comparisons. We must understand that the inferiority and superiority is only relative(thanks to Einstein). The fact is our life our life and it is actually as dull as our view of it and as bright as our assumption of it.
I won't tell that when you feel low look for the good and blessings in your life because in that frame of mind it would be really hard. I believe how a thing looks is very much the way we look it. the world is beautiful or ugly believe it or not both are true. It's how we perceive things.
I won't preach to change your way of looking life all I can say that don't take it too seriously no matter how it looks that way it would help you being hopeful yet humble and not arrogant or depressed.
B. The corollary to above feeling is a more common feeling in which you feel good if something negative and bad happens to someone because it makes you feel that you are not the worst and hence not alone. It makes you feel good about yourself.
If you were not a brilliant student in school and just average and below average then try to remember the guy whom you were sure would get lesser marks than you. you didn't had ridicule or hate feeling toward him you just were content that he would be worse than you. In fact there is an unrealized likeliness for that very person.
I have come to ascertain that these feelings though considered menial and negative but is also a very natural feeling. We just try to evade/ignore/avoid/suppress this very feeling but in my opinion it's better to accept this feeling and understand our own insecurities behind this.
If you take A into consideration it's simply a residue of "left-out" feeling. As a natural tendency all we do is to compare our own life with that person's in a split of second and find a lull and void in our life whereas in that person's life it's a progress and something welcoming good happening. So we feel sad about ourselves which when not tackled grows to feeling bad in general and sometime a silent and dark wish that this good must not happen to that person.
Whereas B for me is little easy and in some way funny feeling when we feel good if something bad happens to someone we know and we like because in the very depth all we do is feel close to that person as he is down and simply like in the above paragraph we compare our life with that person's and find ourselves lucky/better/happening than the other person's that makes us feel better about ourselves which again is when not handled is feeling good at others' misery.
At home suppose you are writhing in pain or illness and asking to god as "Why me?" feeling that you have been eternally punished and feeling so low about your own being that you feel not much interest in your life as such. Slowly you get into depression and from window you see people laughing, talking, playing carelessly and you feel that you are cursed as such as you are not blessed for what others are blessed.
After someday you visit to a doctor and while waiting on for your number you start to have a look at other patients bit closely and you see some people in really such a pathetic condition that it sends a chill in your spine and you totally sort of forget yourself and even your pain. You subconsciously realize if your life is curse what are theirs'? You thank god that you are not punished like them, you feel your problem to be puny and nothing compared to some of them. Sometime you just wonder how they are even living their life? All in all while sitting their you tends to slowly feel good about yourself, you feel more positive.
This is not about you and me, I guess it is just about all of us, it's the tendency to comparing ourselves to others. Is there a solution to that? For me there is no solution as such if we don't take it as a problem anyhow. We should understand that our life is our own it could be dull from someone else as well as it will be brighter from some. If we can't help but compare we should be smart enough to not to value those comparisons. We must understand that the inferiority and superiority is only relative(thanks to Einstein). The fact is our life our life and it is actually as dull as our view of it and as bright as our assumption of it.
I won't tell that when you feel low look for the good and blessings in your life because in that frame of mind it would be really hard. I believe how a thing looks is very much the way we look it. the world is beautiful or ugly believe it or not both are true. It's how we perceive things.
I won't preach to change your way of looking life all I can say that don't take it too seriously no matter how it looks that way it would help you being hopeful yet humble and not arrogant or depressed.
